Category Archives: Parenting

The Best Laid Plans

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SanibelThe last week of March is normally the pivot of my sister’s year because her entire family gathers to share a long-standing tradition: a vacation on Sanibel Island, Florida. That’s 1 husband, 7 children, 4 in-law children, 9 grandchildren, and her.

We can credit Nate with “finding” Sanibel, though it’s been on the map for quite some time. He first visited the island in 1966 on a college spring break with his roommate. Promising himself he’d return one day, he finally did in 1979, with a wife and 3 children in tow. Sanibel’s unsullied beauty charmed us all and brought us back year after year.

???????????????????????????????Mary’s family, vacationing on Marco Island farther south, occasionally visited Sanibel, and eventually we convinced them to vacation there, too. The island became our extended family gathering spot where even our elderly parents joined in. Though a family financial crisis kept Nate and I from regular vacations after 1990, Mary’s family continued the Sanibel tradition.

Actually, they’re supposed to be on the island right now.

Plane tickets had been purchased. Road trips planned. Deposits paid. Twenty-two people had all but put their clothes into suitcases when cancer was found. As Mary and Bervin pursued medical facts and an accurate diagnosis, they encouraged the rest of their family to head for Sanibel anyway. “All of you should go,” they said.

But not one of them would.

Instead, they rallied around their parents and committed to staying close by and available through the cancer journey. Not once have I heard a complaint or an if-only from any of them.

I had one, though: “If only they could have had their time in Sanibel before finding cancer…. Or maybe afterwards.”

That’s when God brought me up short, as he often has to do. “Did it ever occur to you I kept them from going to Sanibel on purpose, for My purpose?”

Here are the thoughts the Lord gave me: “There’s virtually no medical help on that island. Even the hospital located off the island couldn’t compare to the world class medical care Chicago and Rochester gave them. You didn’t see it coming, but I saw Mary’s 104.6 fever. And I saw her cancer. And I kept her home to facilitate immediate, expert help.”

He went on: “I also structured it so that 20 family members would have an ideal opportunity to show love to Mary and Bervin by setting their own disappointment aside and rallying around them.”

Oh.

When something in life blindsides us, it’s important to note the timing. In the Bible we see God unfolding all kinds of intricately timed plans in the lives of his people, and he’s still doing it today. My knee-jerk reaction about a missed vacation was, “What a shame.” A better response would have been, “I trust you to know best, Lord.”

Thankfully Mary’s entire family reacted with nothing but love.

7 kids minus Jo“Put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:14)

Mary’s prayer requests:

  1. For the newly-prescribed antibiotics to work well on the infection that’s developed around Mary’s feeding tube
  2. That God will work it out to head home Thursday to receive Marta (flying into Chicago from Arkansas Friday morning).
  3. Praise for some tomato soup today. Mary said, “It tasted so good!”
  4. Praise for reminders of God’s presence at Mayo’s. Today a volunteer piano player was singing and playing “How great is our God!”

Back to Zero

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ZeroMost of us think of zero as a big nothing. Emptiness. A non-entity. Blank. But in the last two weeks of staying with my daughter Linnea and her family, I’ve seen the immense value of zero.

Each night, just before the 3 older children (ages 5, 3, 1) had their baths, Linnea and Adam orchestrated a major overhaul of the house. Phase One included dinnertime clean-up of dishes, high chair, table, under-the-table, leftovers, and kitchen.

Phase Two incorporated the living room play area, sorting toys and putting them into their proper containers. It also meant vacuuming the carpet which somehow became cluttered with all manner of debris during a busy day.

???????????????????????????????Phase Three took place in the children’s bedroom where they all bunk together. Wall-to-wall toys, evidence of a day of creative play, had to be “binned” and lined up beneath the bed. Stuffed animals were gathered into a big plastic tub in the corner, and clean laundry was put into the proper drawers.

These 3 Phases sound complicated, especially since tired children are difficult to motivate, but the process is usually complete in 15 minutes. I watch and marvel as the whole house “gets back to zero.” It’s that magnificent zone of neat-and-tidy.

The people-parallel is obvious. Our lives can quickly get cluttered with debris of all sorts: the burdens of others we’re not meant to carry, unrealistic expectations of what we can accomplish in one day, over-commitment of our limited time or resources, anxiety over circumstances we can’t change. Everywhere we look we see disorder, and it can overwhelm us.

That’s when we need to initiate our own Phases One, Two, and Three. We can focus on the situation that bothers us most and start by tidying it up in small ways. We should think of it as working from the edges in, rather than redoing everything at once. By slowly tackling one area and then another and another, as time passes we can get back to zero-order in all the disorderly areas of our lives, freshening up our perspective.

???????????????????????????????At Linnea and Adam’s house, as we’ve sat together while the children slept, each night we silently appreciated a zero- cluttered house. In those precious moments, no one talked about how 3 imaginative children would be pulling out bins and baskets in a few short hours, leaving our orderly zero far behind. In those quiet, late evening hours, sitting in the midst of back-to-zero was deeply satisfying.

And if anyone tells you that zero amounts to a-lotta-nothin’, don’t you believe it.

“Be sure that everything is done properly and in order.” (1 Corinthians 14:40)

A Birth Day

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It isn’t every day a grandma gets to help birth a baby! But today was one of those amazing days.

Even though my role was minor (conversing during labor, fanning an overheated mama, running for cool cloths), the grand finale’ was extraordinary for all six of us as we welcomed baby Isaac William into Linnea and Adam’s family. He joins Skylar, Micah, and Autumn, a happy pack of 4 children born in 5 years.

???????????????????????????????Birthing a baby is no small feat, and labor is well named. But Linnea was a trooper, enduring her unexpectedly long ordeal with stoicism and patience. As labors go, her 8 hour effort wasn’t especially long, but after 3 lightning fast labors, this one was a surprise.

As always, though, once the baby was in-arms, the duration of labor no longer mattered. As the book of Proverbs says, “the desire accomplished is sweet to the soul” (13:19), and nothing could diminish our joy. Later, as we sat pondering who “little” Isaac (9 pounds 1 ounce) would turn out to be, we knew that our wonderings had already been personally determined by God himself. And since that was true, we knew he was headed for a grand future.

Isaac William.“Father in heaven, may Isaac hear you calling his name while still a little child, and may he love you so steadfastly that he never turns away.”

“May you become blameless and pure, [a child] of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.Then you will shine…. like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.” (Phil. 2:14-16)